On December 8, 1977, the Mets were one of four teams involved in one of the most complex deals in the history of baseball. This was it : The Mets sent John Milner to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Atlanta Braves sent Willie Montanez to the New York Mets. The Texas Rangers sent Adrian Devine, Tommy Boggs, and Eddie Miller to the Atlanta Braves. The Texas Rangers sent a player to be named later and Tom [...]

I was going to start this post with “here’s a trivia question for you” but then I remembered Art Rust Jr., the long-time sports talk host on WABC-AM who got annoyed whenever someone would start off a call with that phrase. Rust would respond “it’s history, not trivia”. So, this is my question on an important piece of Mets’ history : What pitcher won the most games for the Mets without ever winning a game [...]

In 1966, in the days before Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, and Nolan Ryan, when the Mets’ young pitchers were named Dick Selma, Dick Rusteck, Darrell Sutherland, and Rob Gardner, the Mets tried to provide some veteran presence on the staff to help carry the team to respectability while the young pitchers developed. In the early sixties, you could make up a pretty good core for your major league rotation with the likes of [...]

Welcome to the final chapter in my exclusive four part series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. If haven’t read the first three installments you can read here:  Part 1 - The Spring Of 1968 Part 2 – The 1968 Offseason Part 3 – The Spring Of 1969 Enjoy… At the June 15th trade deadline, the Mets were in second place, nine games behind the Cubs. Led by  Leo Durocher, the Cubs were practically a collection of all-stars led [...]

Welcome to Part Three of my exclusive four part series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. If haven’t read my first two installments you check them out here: The Spring Of 1968 - The 1968 Offseason.  With no major acquisitions over the winter, the focus in spring training was primarily on the young players. The one exception was Tommie Agee. Coming off a disastrous first season, Agee was surprisingly handed the centerfield job in spring training, with manager [...]

Welcome to Part Two of my series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. You can read Part One by clicking, The Spring Of 1968. The 1968 Off-Season The Mets had just completed their most successful year winning 73 games and finishing in 9th place under new manager Gil Hodges. Even though it wasn’t that much of an improvement over previous years, there were definitely some positive developments in ’68. Second-year man Tom Seaver and rookie [...]

Welcome to Part One of my four part series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. Turn Back The Clock 45 Years – It’s the Spring of 1968. Spring training of 1968 saw the Mets coming off another last place finish but with a few glimmers of hope for the future. There was a new manager in Gil Hodges and a new center fielder in former  A.L. Rookie of The Year Tommie Agee who came to [...]

The 1969 Miracle Mets inspired dozens of books and for those of us who were Mets fans then, they represented an iconic team that will live in our memory forever. What made them so special was that pitching aside, they were primarily a very ordinary team of journeymen, disappointments, and discarded veterans who came together for one great and totally unexpected season. I can assume that nearly every Mets fan has at one time or [...]

When discussing the outstanding trades the Mets have made over the years, the acquisition of Bernard Gilkey from the Cardinals is usually forgotten. In part, this could be because Gilkey really had only one good year for the Mets – although it was a terrific one, and also because even with Gilkey, the 1996 Mets weren’t a very good team. Yet, Gilkey remains possibly the only experienced hitter ever to come to the Mets and immediately [...]